DataMules Blog

Boosting Productivity - Your Way

Who doesn't like to be more productive? That's obviously a rhetorical
question, but boosting productivity is not always a simple matter of
deciding to do so. Much of today's software fails to cater to your needs,
leaving you to fumble with their way of doing things. As a result, we here
at Data Mules have focused from the outset on allowing as much customization as
possible. Today, I want to talk about one of the ways we do that:
keyboard shortcuts.

Let's face it, the mouse doesn't always cut it. For power users,
moving your hands from keyboard to mouse wastes too much time. And while all
modern software provides keyboard shortcuts, it's surprising how few allow
actual control over those shortcuts. To combat this, we allow you to fully
customize your shortcuts and make it easy to do so.

We accomplish this by storing shortcuts in an easy to locate INI file. If you
don't know what an INI file is, it's just a text file that follows a simple
pattern that you'll see in a minute. Saving shortcuts this way allows them to
be easily read, changed, and shared. If your organization wants to offer a
standard set of shortcuts for every user in the company, it's as easy as
copying and pasting the text file onto each users computer.

If you have a great shortcut set you want the world to know about, just tell
everyone the contents of your INI file. Similarly, you can use shortcut sets
from others and switch between them easily. We provide some pre-made
sets that are similar to applications you already use, as well as our own set
which we think will help you greatly.

Here is a sample of what the shortcut file looks like:

[sheet]Copy=Ctrl+CCut=Ctrl+XPaste=Ctrl+VUndo=Ctrl+ZRedo=Ctrl+Y...

A list of available "actions" (e.g., like "Copy", "Paste", etc.) can be found
by searching the help files for "shortcuts". The [sheet] section at the top
just signifies that the following shortcut keys are applicable to a sheet
(rather than say, the application).

As an added bonus, you can use as many shortcuts as you want for one task. So
let's say you want to add another "Redo" shortcut. Some applications use
Ctrl+Shift+Z and maybe you want to use that most of the time, but sometimes you
want to use our default (Ctrl+Y). Then just change that line of the file to
say:

Redo=Ctrl+Y,Ctrl+Shift+Z

and you're good to go!

If you don't want to edit a text file, you can do it through the application as
well. You can even import and export shortcut sets. With all of these
improvements to the current, obfuscated way of customizing your life, we hope
your day will be a little more fun and a lot more productive!